OpenSim Power Boat Racing Association : My Idea's for Cross-Grid Competition : and setting a Physics Engine Standard

By Avatar JayR Cela

    I have an idea I would like some opinions on, please bear with me while I explain.

    Growing up in the state of Michigan USA during the 1960's and 70's the big events of the summer season was attending the numerous Hydroplane racing events throughout the state. My family and friends would drive for hours just to be able to attend some of the more prestigious and spectacular races, the biggest daddy of them all was, and still is the APBA Gold Cup ( American Power Boat Association ) on the Detroit River just off the shores of historic Belle Isle. It is a fantastic and exciting spectator sporting event, watching man and women, struggling against a machine and skimming bare inches above the water at speeds upwards of 120 to 180 m.p.h. Every now and then a driver would loose control and flip the boat or crash into another one. The excitement in the crowd was incredible.

    At this point in time OpenSim is trying to cross a milestone within the Physics Engine debate, do we use Bullet Physics or UbODE Physics, as you may already be aware of Second Life uses the HAVOK Physics engine licensed from  https://www.havok.com/physics/ and requires a fairly hefty sum of money to have the privilege of including it within your Virtual World environment.

    The UbODE engine has the advantage of physical movement scripts that are fully compatible with scripts that have been developed and fine tuned over the years within SecondLife, Bullet physics on the other hand does not. We as OpenSim residents have several other issues that a Closed Grid such as SecondLife or Inworldz administrators do not have to deal with, multiple versions ( the exception being the SL Beta testing grid ) of the OpenSim Server environment, some Grids are running 0.8.2 and are using Var Sim's of enormous size in order to beat the dreaded Sim Border crossing issue, other's have adapted the new 0.9.xx series and are preferring to stick to the standard 256x256 Sim size, there by avoiding some of the issues associated with maintaining a Var Sim.

    I feel it is very important to get this Physic's engine debate behind us and move forward with one agreed upon standard. I will be actively promoting Hydroplane racing event's throughout the remainder of 2017, and some feed back is definitely welcome. The Idea is to sponsor multiple participating Grids in an open competition, in order to compare various statistics  that relate to presenting overall performance characteristics and publish an easy to comprehend guideline.

JayR Cela :_)

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